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California has a significant day laborer population, with about one-third of the total U.S. day laborer population working in the state. Day laborers, characterized by a lack of labor protections, low socioeconomic status, English illiteracy, and irregular immigration status, face numerous challenges regarding work-related injuries and limited access to healthcare. Eighty percent of day laborers are undocumented, and most do not have access to healthcare. Despite recent research growth, little is known about their experiences with work-related injuries and healthcare treatment. Our findings reveal that only 8.4% of day laborers have health insurance, and around 26% have experienced work-related injuries. This paper highlights the challenges faced by this population and emphasizes the importance of understanding their experiences to improve occupational health and safety policy. Additionally, we acknowledge the critical role of worker centers and national efforts in addressing health and safety issues among day laborers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assembly line worker assignment and balancing problem (ALWABP) is an important research topic originated from sheltered work centres for disabled, in which workforce is assumed to be heterogeneous due to their disabilities. Since the employment of disabled workers may sustain higher absenteeism rates due to their health, especially under COVID-19, employing temporary workers to fill labour shortage is a crucial issue. In addition, in practice, the movement of workers between stations on assemble lines can increase the flexibility of worker assignment. In this study, we investigate a new risk-averse ALWABP with uncertain disabled worker availability, limited temporary workers and moving workers. The objective is to minimise the risk-averse weighted sum of the cycle time and the number of employed temporary workers. For the problem, a risk-averse two-stage stochastic programming model is formulated. The first stage assigns specific tasks (called fixed tasks) to stations, while the second stage assigns workers and remaining tasks (called flexible tasks) to stations. A genetic algorithm combining K-means clustering approach and variable neighbourhood search (GAKV) is designed. Experiment results show the superiority of the GAKV in terms of solution quality and computation time compared with sample average approximation (SAA). In addition, managerial insights are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mundo Agrario is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The current pandemic with its associated economic downturn has intensified the pressures on companies to produce quality offerings with an increased pressure on cost controls. Across industries companies have reduced their costs by enhancing their ability to operate flexibly, through increasing the use of temporary workers. However, such a reliance on temporary workers is generally associated with deteriorating quality. In order to untangle the relationship between quality and temporary workers we address the following research questions: (1) What are the quality performance implications of employing temporary workers? and (2) Can process capabilities eliminate the potential quality performance deterioration that are due to temporary workers? Process capabilities are conceptualised through the plant's level of of-the-art manufacturing processes technology. To address our research questions, we utilise survey data collected through the Global Manufacturing Research Group. The results suggest that an increased usage of temporary workers significantly increases reject rates and customer returns. Furthermore, we identified that managers cannot rely on their processes to safeguard them from quality performance deterioration, when employing temporary workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effect of hiring temporary workers on the voluntary turnover of permanent employees. It argues that inflows of temporary workers erode the working conditions of permanent employees, prompting their voluntary departure. Using a unique panel dataset of individual-level monthly payroll data over an eight-year period in a sample of Spanish companies, a positive association between temporary worker inflows and the voluntary turnover of permanent workers is found. The results are robust to diverse specifications and are strongest for firms in non-manufacturing sectors and for firms that hire proportionally more low-skilled workers, contexts where the hiring of temporary workers may be more disruptive for permanent employees. Since the hiring of temporary workers is unlikely to threaten the employment of permanent employees in the dual labour market of Spain, the results indicate serious disruption costs associated with temporary hiring in organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every year the number of Moroccan women who travel temporarily to Spain to work in the berry farm grows. In the year 2022 there were 19,000 women. However, this activity is accompanied by labor irregularities, complaints of sexual abuse and other problems that have drawn the attention of international organizations. The aim of this article is to expose the existing breach of labor rights based on the construction of a recruitment profile and the emerging response and attitude of resistance on the part of migrant women in the province. The methodology starts from a feminist point of view and an ethnographic study is carried out, from February to April 2022, where the main axis will be the stories of Moroccan women. Among the conclusions we discover how the search for a recruitment profile based on discriminatory elements that guarantee the return of women workers leads to serious consequences such as the systematic breach of their labor rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seasonal migrant farmworkers are essential to the success of agriculture in Quebec as they provide the labor needed to produce crops and animals. Notwithstanding, these workers are often at risk of occupational health and safety hazards, while only a few interventions have been implemented to improve the situation. Modern engineering interventions like exoskeleton devices have been introduced to reduce the risk of developing musculoskeletal disorders in other industries, but nothing much has been done in agriculture. This paper employed a mixed-method approach to evaluate the effect of environmental conditions and physical activities on farmworkers' bodies and sensations and explore their speculative opinions about exoskeletons for their tasks. This study took place in a large plant nursery. Data were collected through field observations, written questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. The analysis showed heat, humidity, cold, and rain affect farmworkers in feeling sore, worn out, tired, weak, and suffocated. The arms and the back were the body parts most affected by the repetitive bending over and carrying the load. Farmworkers' exoskeleton perceptions were positive, remarking benefits such as making the task easier, improving posture, reducing fatigue, and protecting the body. The barriers that emerged were concerning the exoskeleton weight, being uncomfortable to wear, causing heat, restricting mobility, not allowing flexibility to change tasks, and not allowing space to work in tight workplaces. The study includes strategies to ensure credibility, reliability, and transferability. Future investigations could test exoskeletons on farmworkers and conduct the cost benefits of exoskeletons in agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Research has documented occupational health disparities, including higher rates of work‐related injuries, among temporary workers compared with workers in standard employment arrangements. According to guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), both staffing companies and host employers are responsible for protecting the occupational safety and health (OSH) of temporary workers. To date, there has been little qualitative research on temporary worker OSH in the United States and a lack of evidence‐based OSH programs designed to meet the needs of temporary workers. The aim of this study was to better understand the barriers to and facilitators of temporary worker OSH from the perspective of US staffing companies. Methods: In‐depth interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of representatives from 15 US staffing companies. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analyzed through a three‐step process. Results: Commonly mentioned barriers to temporary worker OSH include differential treatment of temporary workers by host employers; lack of understanding among host employers and staffing companies of joint OSH responsibilities; and workers' fear of job loss or other negative repercussions if they report an injury or illness or voice OSH concerns. Commonly mentioned facilitators of temporary worker OSH include conducting client assessments and site visits and fostering strong communication and relationships with both host employers and temporary workers. Conclusions: These findings can help inform the tailoring of OSH programs to promote health equity in temporary workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Temporary employees in Indonesia have less certainty over their recent and prospective careers. This study aims to investigate whether the Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) may predict personal initiative (PI) and subsequently affect work performance (WP). It was hypothesized that there was a direct and indirect relationship between IU and WP, through the PI. The Purposive sampling technique was utilised in this research. The sample comprised 153 temporary employees who have been working in their current contract for more than six months Data was gathered through The Intolerance of uncertainty-12 items, Personal Initiative Scale, and Individual Work Performance Questionnaire and analyzed through Mediation analysis from PROCESS. The result reveals that IU does not have a direct relationship to WP (effect = -0.1450, p ­= .187), however, IU indirectly predicts WP through PI (effect = -0.1510, LLCI = -0.3251, ULCI = -0.0079). Temporary employees who report higher IU will have less PI (effect = -0.1254, p =0.0259), and eventually, their work performance will decrease (effect = 1.2042, p < 0.001). This research has some implications. First, during the employees’ recruitment process, the organisation need to consider the IU as a redictor of WP, and the government need to ensure that the companies abide by the Indonesian Labour Law – Act 13 of 2003 related to employees' welfare.

To monitor trends in alternative work arrangements, the authors conducted a version of the Contingent Worker Survey as part of the RAND American Life Panel in late 2015. Their findings point to a rise in the incidence of alternative work arrangements in the US economy from 1995 to 2015. The percentage of workers engaged in alternative work arrangements—defined as temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers—rose from 10.7% in February 2005 to possibly as high as 15.8% in late 2015. Workers who provide services through online intermediaries, such as Uber or TaskRabbit, accounted for 0.5% of all workers in 2015. Of the workers selling goods or services directly to customers, approximately twice as many reported finding customers through off-line intermediaries than through online intermediaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the relationship between temporary employment and firms' financial performance in Chinese manufacturing firms. Using two waves of large social survey data, the empirical results reveal (1) the proportion of temporary workers has a significant inverted-U-shaped relationship with a firm's financial performance, (2) a firm's human resource treatment disparity between permanent and temporary workers (HR treatment disparity) strengthens the negative relationship between temporary employment and performance, and (3) the innovation-oriented firm strategy in conjunction with a higher proportion of temporary workers is associated with poorer firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the impact of employment protection legislation on firm-level outcomes such as employment and profitability in South Korea. The 2007 Act on the Protection of Temporary Workers restricted the use of specific types of temporary contracts to a period of two years. Exploiting the fact that the impact of the reforms was greater for establishments that intensively used the affected temporary workers, the authors apply a difference-in-differences framework. Their results show that businesses responded to the Act by reducing the use of temporary contracts protected by the reforms and partially substituting them with permanent and other unprotected temporary contracts. As a result, the reform decreased overall employment level of establishments. Furthermore, the authors find that the newly introduced regulations had a limited negative impact on firms’ profitability. Evidence suggests that establishments also improved their capital intensity and their labor productivity in response to the labor reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The various rhetorics of 'agile', 'agility', and 'agile working' (AW) set an agenda for new ways of working and have recently gained traction in popular management discourse, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet conceptually, these rhetorical varieties of 'agile' are underdeveloped in the academic literature. In this article we examine the stream of AW as being a particularly influential rhetoric. AW is critically evaluated by first identifying separate streams and rhetorics of 'agile' in the literature, and AW is then situated within this typology. To understand the particular version of reality being mainstreamed by the AW rhetoric, we then examine AWs conceptualisation as 'a new way of working', as promoted by dominant actors within the UK work context. We then consider existing studies of worker experiences under different employment arrangements that can be subsumed under the heading of 'AW practices'. Our analysis highlights voids between what may be considered as mainstream HR practice when applied to standard employees compared to a spectrum of 'non-standard' workers. The implications for the role of HR in the implementation of AW and in managing the worker experience are discussed and future avenues for this under-researched area are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Catalana de Dret Públic is the property of Revista Catalana de Dret Public and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

California has a significant day laborer population, with about one-third of the total U.S. day laborer population working in the state. Day laborers, characterized by a lack of labor protections, low socioeconomic status, English illiteracy, and irregular immigration status, face numerous challenges regarding work-related injuries and limited access to healthcare. Eighty percent of day laborers are undocumented, and most do not have access to healthcare. Despite recent research growth, little is known about their experiences with work-related injuries and healthcare treatment. Our findings reveal that only 8.4% of day laborers have health insurance, and around 26% have experienced work-related injuries. This paper highlights the challenges faced by this population and emphasizes the importance of understanding their experiences to improve occupational health and safety policy. Additionally, we acknowledge the critical role of worker centers and national efforts in addressing health and safety issues among day laborers., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Temporary workers already represent a relevant percentage of the total workforce in several European countries. This type of employment is usually associated with more precarious contractual and working conditions. This situation can lead to several negative outcomes in terms of workers' physical and mental health. According to Job Demands-Resources (JD-R), the precarious situation of temporary workers can reduce the number of available resources and lead to mental health problems. This research aims to examine the importance of personal resources—in the form of resilience—with burnout and its three dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal fulfillment), as a consequence of the job strain generated by this employment. The empirical study follows a quantitative, correlational, and cross-sectional approach. A sample of 2050 individuals participated in the study. Responses were collected through an online questionnaire for Portuguese temporary workers in March 2021. The questionnaire was sent to active temporary workers registered in temporary agencies The hypotheses established through a structural model were tested by the Partial Least Square method. The results show that resilience, as a personal resource, is related to the three dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal fulfillment). As such, personal resources can be considered an important aspect to take into account when managing temporary agency workers' burnout levels. Theoretically, this research contributes to understanding the role of personal resources, especially resilience as an important inhibitor of negative effects on workers' mental health, such as burnout. Empirically, this study contributes to the discussion of the mental health challenges of temporary agency workers, reinforcing the importance of developing strategies to strengthen personal resources as a way to improve mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This paper analyses the role of the Global Union Federations (GUFs) and Solidarity Support Organizations (SSOs) have played in Asian unions’ attempts to reach out to temporary foreign workers, drawing on ten years of qualitative fieldwork with the GUFs at headquarters and regional level and with their affiliates in the seven Asian countries that rely most heavily on temporary labor migration. Union renewal and revitalization are seen as side-effects of that focus, as new constituencies are able to shore up membership and bring new ideas and perspectives into the movement.

This article investigates the effect of workplace unionization and product market volatility on firms’ propensity to use temporary employment. Using Italian firm-level data, the authors show that volatility has a positive impact on the share of temporary contracts. The baseline estimates for the impact of unions are inconclusive, but a clear pattern emerges when a specification including an interaction term with volatility is used. This approach allows a richer characterization of the impact of workplace unionization, which is positive for low levels of volatility and negative for high levels. The authors discuss various direct and indirect mechanisms to explain this novel finding. Furthermore, they find that these effects hold only for cases in which the employer does not provide training for temporary workers, whereas temporary contracts with training provisions are not affected by unions, volatility, and their interplay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on case studies in the German metal and chemical sectors, this article addresses trade unions’ behavior toward employers’ labor market segmentation strategies and, in particular, their use of outsourcing. Findings illustrate that, contrary to the expectations of the dualization literature, trade unions do not always give priority to their core constituency over the interests of temporary or peripheral workers. Union actions are not solely determined by the aim of defending the interests of their current members but depend instead on the interrelationship between unions’ identity and their members’ and organizational interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An established tenet of the literature is that the use of flexible labor leads to less innovation. Yet, less attention has been paid to the possibility that it is the decision to innovate that generates the incentive to hire on a permanent basis. The goal of this paper is to show the existence of interlocking complementarities between the firm's technological and hiring strategies. To do so, we develop a simple model where the workers' decision to invest in human capital is affected by the type of employment contract (temporary versus permanent) and by the type of technological investments (routine versus innovative). When the firm is unable to coordinate its actions across these different domains, two equilibria simultaneously exist: in the 'high-road' equilibrium, firms invest more in innovative projects and hire on a permanent basis; in the 'low-road' equilibrium, they invest more in routine projects and hire on a temporary basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) between Mexico and Canada by examining the forms of disposability and job insecurity of Mexicans employed in Canadian agribusiness. We argue that the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program has exacerbated the precarity and disposability of Mexican workers by restructuring family dynamics and care chains. This article represents a critique of the SAWP as a model of regulated labor migration, serving as a basis for analyzing the consequences of the proletarianization of the Mexican peasantry and its use as disposable labor for export. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Studies have found that several individual and organizational factors influence the occurrence of accidents. Researchers have also highlighted the need for the development of new accident models. The main aim of this study was to assess the contributing causes of occupational accidents using a questionnaire. Methods: A total of 365 managers and employees participated in the current study from 9 manufacturing companies located in the northwest of Iran. A questionnaire comprising 100 accident causes was used to gather the required data for this study. Results: Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) yielded 14 factors contributing to accidents, and confirmatory factor analysis found satisfactory fit indices for the EFA model. The participants reported unsafe acts as the most important factor for the occurrence of accidents. A t-test revealed that participants who received safety training experienced fewer occupational accidents than other respondents. The one-way analysis of variance showed that the companies significantly differed in the perception of accident causes. Structural equation modeling indicated that organizational-managerial factors had a larger effect on individual factors than external factors. Conclusion: The results indicate that providing safety training is necessary to control the employees' unsafe acts. Managers of the companies should pay special attention to the organizational factors affecting the occurrence of accidents. The findings of this study might help the managers to develop more targeted countermeasures for reducing occupational accidents.

Fitting duration models on an inflow sample of jobs in Germany starting in 2002 to 2010, the author investigates the impact of employers’ use of temporary agency work on regular workers’ job stability. In line with dual labor market theory, the author finds that nontemporary jobs are significantly more stable when employers use temporary agency workers. The rise in job stability stems mainly from reduced transitions into nonemployment, suggesting that nontemporary workers are safeguarded against involuntary job losses. The findings are robust to controlling for unobserved permanent employer characteristics and changes in the observational window that comprises the labor market disruption of the Great Recession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the agrarian roots of social capital. I show that Italian areas exhibiting a higher share of temporary agricultural workers in the Post-Unification period register lower civic capital today. Spatial analysis and IV estimates using malaria as a source of exogenous variation indicate that the effect is robust even after controlling for social-property relations being not randomly determined. Finally, I demonstrate that institutions affecting the benefits and costs of cultural norms generate persistent effects. I investigate the role of "industrial districts" as a mechanism to transmit the cultural trait of cooperation through time. Since they developed where temporary workers were relatively rare, I find those municipalities exhibiting high civic capital to have a higher propensity to belong to an industrial district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differences in temporary and permanent workers' risk-benefit appraisals need to be investigated due to its potential relationship with incurred risk and occupational risk-taking behaviours. A total of 158 temporary and 158 permanent workers were recruited and exposed to information on eleven different hazardous job contexts, the description of the required tasks, inherent occupational hazards, and suggested salaries. They were asked to report their perceptions on how hazardous the jobs are, their satisfaction with the accompanying salary, and their willingness to take the job for eleven different job contexts. Temporary workers reported lower job security, lower perceived control, and were more satisfied by salaries than their permanent counterparts; however, there was no difference in perceptions of hazard associated with the jobs. Temporary workers also reported greater willingness to take job opportunities. Temporary workers experience a unique array of stressors and may agree to hazardous work opportunities, not due to a lack of acknowledged safety and health risks, but rather a greater satisfaction from salaries. These findings need to be considered in the safety management of temporary workers, as organizations can improve safety and facilitate self-regulatory engagement in safer and healthier behaviours for both permanent and temporary employees with this appraisal system in mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (AMS) between 2000 and 2014, this paper investigates the effect of labor contract modalities on firm productivity within the industrial sector through a structural model. We find that the elasticity of revenue with respect to temporary workers is often lower than that with respect to permanent workers, but not in small firms, where some forms of flexibility might lead to productivity gains.

Temporary workers already represent a relevant percentage of the total workforce in several European countries. This type of employment is usually associated with more precarious contractual and working conditions. This situation can lead to several negative outcomes in terms of workers’ physical and mental health. According to Job Demands-Resources (JD-R), the precarious situation of temporary workers can reduce the number of available resources and lead to mental health problems. This research aims to examine the importance of personal resources—in the form of resilience—with burnout and its three dimensions (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal fulfillment), as a consequence of the job strain generated by this employment. The empirical study follows a quantitative, correlational, and cross-sectional approach. A sample of 2050 individuals participated in the study. Responses were collected through an online questionnaire for Portuguese temporary workers in March 2021. The questionnaire was sent to active temporary workers registered in temporary agencies The hypotheses established through a structural model were tested by the Partial Least Square method. The results show that resilience, as a personal resource, is related to the three dimensions of burnout (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal fulfillment). As such, personal resources can be considered an important aspect to take into account when managing temporary agency workers’ burnout levels. Theoretically, this research contributes to understanding the role of personal resources, especially resilience as an important inhibitor of negative effects on workers’ mental health, such as burnout. Empirically, this study contributes to the discussion of the mental health challenges of temporary agency workers, reinforcing the importance of developing strategies to strengthen personal resources as a way to improve mental health.

This article analyses the skills and competence acquisition of migration entrepreneurs in the H-2 visa programme, a U.S. temporary worker scheme. This programme, which nowadays largely recruits Mexicans, is managed by a migration industry of labour contracting agencies, recruiters, document processors, and transporters. This article focuses on recruiters, in charge of selecting workers, and document processors, responsible for completing visa application forms. Hailing mostly from the rural working class, recruiters derive expertise from membership in the social world of the migrant. The competences of document processors closely track their belonging in the urban middle class, reflecting experiences of formal education which prepare them to deal with the bureaucratic interface of the programme. These migration entrepreneurs also acquire skills by cooperating and competing with colleagues, migrants, contracting firms, employers, advocates, and government officials – interactions that expose them the risks and benefits of a more expansive role in the brokerage apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research on temporary work has suggested that temporary work experiences vary greatly in quality. In light of concerns about diminished quality of some temporary work experiences, we suggest that temporary workers may experience a variety of stressful work situations that could precipitate detrimental outcomes not only for these workers, but also for their co‐workers and organizations. Using a multi‐wave survey of temporary workers, this study examines the relationship between economic, interpersonal, and organizational stressors and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). Specifically, we hypothesize that economic stressors (operationalized as economic hardship and job insecurity), interpersonal conflict and organizational constraints will predict the extent to which temporary workers perform CWB via emotional exhaustion and moral disengagement pathways. Three waves of data show that temporary workers experiencing higher levels of economic hardship, interpersonal conflict and organizational constraints reported greater emotional exhaustion, which was linked to increased frequency of CWBs. Additionally, higher levels of job insecurity and interpersonal conflict were related to higher levels of moral disengagement, which related to increased frequency of CWBs. These findings highlight relationships of different stressors with emotional and cognitive reactions that may trigger CWB in temporary workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]